Once in a while we end up with a column with two distinctively different topics. And what follows is a letter from a lady out in California, plus an update, or backdate, on the subject of steam locomotives.

First, here’s the letter with the special request:

&uot;On Dec. 12 this year, it will be fifty years since a popular Albert Lea girl died of cancer at age 34. Her children would like to hear from any friends still living in the area, for inclusion in a Memorial Book they plan to create for the First United Methodist Church and Freeborn County Historical Society.

&uot;On May 31, 1935, 16-year-old honors student Bernadette (Bernie) Naomi Thompson of 425 W. College St. graduated from Albert Lea High School and got ready to head to college at the University of Minnesota in the fall. Summers after that she worked as a sports reporter at the Albert Lea Tribune, an avid fan covering the baseball season for us. Her father, D. C. (Tommy) Thompson, foreman at the M. & St. L. roundhouse, once played for the Albert Lea team, and never missed a game if he could help it.

&uot;Then came World War II. … Correctly anticipating her U. of M. boyfriend from Brainerd, Irving Steinfeldt, would also have to go, Bernie eloped when she was 19. Burton and Garnet Trapp, heirs to Trapp’s Store on West College, went along to Iowa (where the age of consent was younger in those days) as witnesses. Irv then went off to the South Pacific with the Army Air Force, and she kept the marriage secret. Perhaps it would have remained a secret forever had he not returned.

&uot;But he did return, and she visited him on leave in California and New Mexico where one of her best friends from Albert Lea, Opal Jensen, was married to Army doctor Harold Freedman. Opal is also gone now, but Irv and Harold are still good friends.

&uot;The marriage couldn’t be kept secret once Bernadette became pregnant with their first child, Carol, born at Naeve Hospital in 1943. After the war was won and Irv returned, the threesome moved to Minneapolis, where son Andy was born in 1948. …

&uot;Then, on Dec. 12, 1952, Bernadette lost her own private battle, and died of cancer. She was 34. Both her parents survived her, stayed on West College until 1980, and are buried here. Her husband eventually remarried a Minneapolis woman, Roz Joseph, who also died of cancer this past July. They had three daughters from her first marriage, in addition to Carol and Andy.

&uot;Bernadette and her mother, Emma Thompson, left several annotated scrapbooks with clippings, programs and photographs annotated with names, dates and places. Among Bernadette’s friends identified in the photos are Dorothy Ann (Dody) Peterson, Luellyn Ludvigsen, Norma Page, Edythe Jensen, Curt Lundquist, ‘Kite’ Hougard, Doris Wells, Merlelle Hyland, Ray Faire, Grant Sorenson, Izzy Hansen, Laurence Stotts, Russell Edwards, Frank Sorenson, Janet Gustaufson, Virginia and Marian Vallum, Harriet Mickleson, Harold Lien, Dan Greengo, Babe Salthum, Ward Noland, Hubert Walgamot, Ruth Manachek, Dorothy Chesterman, and Dick Snyder of Jackson.

&uot;If anyone knows the whereabouts of these people from Bernie’s books, or has stories or pictures about Bernadette to share, please send them to Carol Liege, 1654 1/2 Electric Avenue, Venice CA 90291, ddiegeamsn.co , or call Andy at 1-800-548-3269, Ext. 401. The family will assemble and bind all material for her friends and neighbors in Albert Lea by the 50th anniversary of her death this December.&uot;

The visits by the Union Pacific’s Challenger steam locomotive 3985 in Albert Lea on June 20 and 22 reminded several people of an earlier visit of another steam locomotive. Joe Groeneweg brought in copies of Tribune photos showing Chicago and NorthWestern Railroad’s steam locomotive No. 1385 which visited Albert Lea in June 1983 and again on Sept. 20, 1983. This engine was on the way to the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom, Wis., where it’s now both on display and used to pull excursion trains.

Feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays in the Tribune.